PGG and its analogues show anti-diabetic and other beneficial bioactivities that make them useful in the development of new drugs. Typically, for FDA approval of new drugs, the purity of the drugs must be higher than 95%. Currently, there are no efficient, cost-effective methods of preparing and purifying PGG or its analogues on a gram to kilogram scale. Until now, chromatographic purification methods have been the only known methods for producing PGG or its analogues at a purity of 95% or greater. Chromatographic methods, however, are both expensive and not amenable to large scale purification of PGG and its analogues. Production of PGG on an industrial scale using currently available methods is prohibitively expensive.
Accordingly, there exists a need for methods of separation and purification of PGG and its analogues that are less expensive than currently known methods, and amenable to larger scale production.